Great Ajax: Level 1 will teach you the basics of programming aynchronous web applications. You'll begin with the simplest interactions, using XmlHttpRequest. But before long, you'll be building chat servers, working with databases and remote services, and doing it all without the user waiting around or clicking Submit buttons. You'll take on XML and JSON, and use both data formats to make your pages and web apps responsive and user-friendly.

Throughout the course, you'll learn how to think about web apps in a totally different manner. Beyond the syntax of Ajax requests, you'll look into lazy loading, interacting with remote servers, and building apps that respond to user expectations, not just their clicks and typing. You'll also get a handle on the sorts of HTML and CSS considerations you'll need to master to really take your web apps to the next level.

When you buy Great Ajax: Level 1, you get access to an entire video library of lessons-including lessons that aren't available yet! Here's the scoop: we're continually adding new sections in Level 1 that take you further into Ajax and web programming. We're also updating existing lessons and creating new ones in response to your questions, along with special "challenge lessons" that will test your skills. All of this is yours with Great Ajax: Level 1.

David Griffiths

David Griffiths began programming at age 12, after being inspired by a documentary on the work of Seymour Papert. At age 15 he wrote an implementation of Papert's computer language LOGO. After studying Pure Mathematics at University, he began writing code for computers and magazine articles for humans and he is currently an agile coach with Exoftware in the UK, helping people to create simpler, more valuable software. He spends his free time traveling and time with his lovely wife, Dawn.

This series of videos have helped me to better understand the basic usage of AJAX. It has been a great refresher of various Javascript web development concepts. The pace at which David Griffiths delivers the material is very well done. His explanations were too the point and easy to understand. The only suggestions would be to emphasize the dangers of using eval() and to mention that escape() & unescape() should no longer be used.

The core idea of this video tells us to use certain eval script heavily in it. It would be a security disaster to use it in real website, unless you are aware of it and do your research to replace it with a more secured alternative.

It is good for students. I would not suggest you to use it as a crash course for your company projects.

Bottom line is I will not recommand it to my friends without warning them the core of the code of this video needs a patch.

So, I will give it a rating of "Needs That Special Something" - 2 Stars.

Concisely, if your looking for the fastest way to start coding using Ajax, there is no substitute.

The instructor in these videos, David Griffiths is also extremely effective in his approach.

I would recommend, picking up an Ajax reference book, and looking into best practices, like why you should never directly eval Ajax responses from the server, as such topics weren't covered in the lectures.